Japan underreported some 640 kilograms of plutonium in its annual report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2012 and 2013, causing a sensation in the international community. The unreported plutonium was stored in the offline No. 3 reactor in Genkai nuclear plant of Kyushu Electric Power Company in southern Japan's Saga Prefecture. Remaining idle since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis, it has long been "omitted" by the Japanese government.

The unreported amount is enough to make as many as 80 nuclear bombs. A nuclear information website offered a firsthand report on the plutonium. Tokyo has been following closely how many nuclear materials North Korea possesses, but failed to declare its own massive stock of plutonium. Japan must have contracted selective amnesia by concealing the truth.

Earlier this year, the US urged a reluctant Japan to return more than 300 kilograms of mostly weapons-grade plutonium. Tokyo was then compelled to display its attitude to return the radioactive substances Washington put there for study and experiment during the Cold War era. The two incidents are likely to interconnect with each other, which is worth the vigilance of the rest of the world. The international community can't afford to take Japan's underreporting with a naïve attitude.

With a history of military occupation and aggression, Japan has been subject to various restrictions in the process of revitalizing militarism. Now that Tokyo has witnessed a satisfactory recovery in its industrial capacity, it is excited about regaining its long-lost influence. And Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a representative sparing no effort to break away from the global pattern set by the Yalta Conference in 1945.

Nuclear weapons constitute one of the most important pursuits of Japanese rightwing forces. Albeit a non-nuclear state, Japan has been trying every means to create a special nuclear deterrence. In addition to its purified nuclear materials that could be diverted for 5,000 bombs, it is fully capable of designing and producing nuclear bombs, all of which can transiently turn it into No.3 nuclear power after Washington and Moscow.

Therefore, an old Japan that blighted Asia with numerous catastrophes will come back soon if the international community leaves it unchecked. At least in the 21st century, its militarist ferity and atrocity must be confined.

Japanese society today brims with the "China Threat" theory and its public opinion is permeated with sorrow, disconcerting for the rest of the world alongside its slogan to safeguard its territorial sovereignty.

Overtly or covertly, ruling or dominating Asia has been haunting Japanese society for a long time. Nevertheless, with limited influence upon Asia due to a small territorial area and population, its rise is doomed to fail.  The international community should not only take seriously Tokyo's conduct this time, but also tap into questions including what is its strategic intention to hide the truth and whether it has underreported more nuclear materials.